Crown Wharf Theatre is a new arts and community space located in the heart of Stone, Staffordshire. The site enjoys a picturesque canal side location, and we are lucky enough to be attached to Joule’s Brewery’s flagship pub – The Crown Wharf.
We opened the venue in November of 2024 and have quickly built a wonderfully varied programme of theatre, comedy and cinema. We regularly welcome a mix of professional touring productions, some of the UKs best comedians, talented community groups, performing arts academies and dance schools to name just a few.
After two years of preparation, Crown Wharf Theatre was granted charitable status by the Charities Commission in 2019, and the project was truly underway. The charity is solely made up of local volunteers, each of whom around busy day-jobs and family lives have been working flat out to make the most of this rare and fantastic chance to bring a theatre and community space to the town.
The way the project presented itself was remarkable, with the massive leg-up from Joule’s Brewery, CWT soon inherited the impressive shell of the theatre building, but it also meant inheriting an enormous responsibility to raise funds, complete the internal fit-out and then run the building for the benefit of as many people as possible.
Our first task was to spend time consulting with a range of theatre experts, capturing the full scope of the project, from heating and ventilation, to floor coverings, acoustics, comfy seating and the multitude of technical requirements which need to be integrated into a fully functioning theatre.
We quickly secured £50,000 from The Stone Town Hall Charity Fund, and began to receive donations from the community and sponsorships from local businesses, this enabled us to begin work to transform the space.
The team went on to raise over £250,000 from exhaustive general fundraising, £75,000 from the HS2 Communities and Environment Fund, and finally a £495,000 allocation from the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund which was achieved with support from Stafford Borough Council.
After years of work, this significant effort meant we finally had all the funds to complete the fit out, installing our seating, theatrical lighting, sound system and back of house facilities.
The project has been powered by volunteers from day one, with different people helping in all sorts of ways, be that volunteering at our community events, painting the walls, building our website, supporting our test events, or organising their own fundraising efforts. It’s been brilliant to feel the community so fully involved in the theatre.
Now many of these early volunteers make up our 100+ team of Front of House volunteers, who night after night ensure our audiences are made to feel welcome and enjoy a safe and pleasant evening.
We also received a lot of kind and generous offers from local contractors, tradespeople and suppliers offering expertise, labour and materials, and all this of course helped reduce the overall cost of the project throughout the build phase.
Completing the building was a huge milestone for the charity but it was in fact only the beginning when it came to bringing the space to life and now running the theatre from day to day effectively. It has been a people powered project to date and its ongoing success lies in a far greater number of people being involved, whether hiring the space, volunteering their time or simply enjoying the wide variety of entertainment and activities on offer.
As a volunteer run and not-for-profit organisation, we believe the Crown Wharf Theatre is a great example of a self-sustaining asset to Stone, one that improves our wonderful town and the lives of people living here.
Our opening production of Shakespeare in Love – November 2024